I can safely say that for a good chunk of my life (let's say 20 years) I have never ever EVER been considered a runner of any sort. If my gym teacher asked me to run a couple laps around the gym, I'd laugh in their face and do anything to skip at least half of those laps. I got creative when it was required to collect different wrist bands per lap and you ALWAYS made sure to have your friend handing you two bracelets per lap to make the experience less painful. In high school I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism/Hashimoto's disease and I can safely say I used that as my crutch: "Why should I bother? I eat healthier than half of these people and I'm still viewed as being fat. Working out won't help either". I won't even get into my obsession with dieting when I was in elementary school before that...
This was my mentality until I got accepted into UW-Madison's engineering program and decided that in order to "fit in" I'd better try this working out thing that people keep raving about. At the same time, my mother had joined the Princeton Club and lost weight and gotten herself healthy and she generously offered to pay for half of my membership in order to have a new workout buddy. I had a few free trainer appointments, and just committed to my new goal. I started with the elliptical and weight machines and after a few weeks, I graduated to the dreaded running. After a lot of pathetic run/walks in laps maybe a mile long I got stronger, my lungs began to actually work WITH me rather than against me (I was an on/off smoker from 17-21... dumb). Once the running started, I saw the pounds fall off and was encouraged! I went from a little over 200lb to 160lb within what seemed like a few months.
With some slip ups, hectic school schedule (seriously, I should have just slept in my classrooms/Wendt Library for the past few semesters), and life events in between, I've been hooked on running. My most recent goal was participating and raising $300 for a 5K obstacle course called the Warrior Dash. All of the money raised would go to St Jude Children's Hospital and I'd get free gear on dash day. My best friend Angela agreed to do the obstacle course with me and I was set. We both reached our goal (with a lot of help from my dad's co-workers) and I really felt like I had accomplished something. Then a week before my race, I thought "ok, so I've done all this training for the Warrior Dash... what's next? I don't want to retreat back to barely making time to workout and losing all this new strength".
Then I thought, a half marathon should do the trick! I was too nervous to bring it up to even my boyfriend for a couple weeks in-case I was having a brief moment of insanity, but then I just bit the bullet and talked with him about it making it seem like a more solid plan. Later that day, we went to Half Price Books (one of my Kryptonites) and while Mike was looking at swimming/coaching books I saw "The Non Runner's Marathon Guide For Women" by Dawn Dais and was so ecstatic! Let's be honest, I had NO IDEA where to start before that. I read the first couple of pages and could not stop laughing at the author's sarcasm and honesty with her original position before she started running. It not only has a day by day workout schedule for a marathon, but also a half marathon! So there it was, I was doing a half marathon.
I started training the day after the Warrior Dash (which was SOOO fun). Here's a picture of what I looked like that day before and after the mud:
My best friend of 19 years. LOVE HER :)
Check out deez guns!
After the run and after being splashed with more mud from an ATV
What I found was great about our effort that day is that I'm a little bit of a stronger runner than Angela (to be fair, she's got friggen asthma and she's still a rockstar runner) and literally after every obstacle she'd be waiting for me at the end. She's da bestest :)
My first run after the Warrior Dash was an easy 4 mile run. I'd run up to 4.75 miles before then, so I was not scared away from the number. It was a slightly difficult run just given the fact that I got PRETTY drunk at a friend's birthday party the night before and in order to cure my hangover I ate Taco Johns for breakfast/lunch. I was a little more sluggish than usual, but I finished. I also was running in my new running shoes I bought for after the Warrior Dash (since my old ones were covered in mud and donated to those who could not afford shoes of their own). In the store, they felt amazing: light, cushy, breathable, AND bright orange shoelaces. Unfortunately, I have this thing where I don't cut my toenails as often as I should and this was the result:
After mile 3 I was feeling this sharp pain in one of my left toes and I immediately thought... great, I can't even get through the first workout before an injury occurs. Eventually, the pain subsided and my toe felt kind of wet and I figured the nail just finally broke and relieved the pressure. After showering, I don't actually even see where the problem occurred. I'm hoping it's just my toenails and NOT my new $60 shoes *crossing fingers* After celebrating Angela's 23rd birthday at Ale Asylum, I decided to write all of my workouts out on my calendar so I can mark each day down until my run:
I started my workout plan on Week 8 according to the book since I'm a bit more of an experienced runner than what is expected for the training and have been doing the workouts on my own pretty much for the previous 7 weeks.
I found a race that is within the time-frame of the training weeks ahead of me. I will be running in the Tyranena 1/2 Barrel Beer Run November 2nd! Beer, running, and geology. I'm in!
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